Monday, December 21, 2009

December 21, 2009, Dublin, OH – Fast Switch, Ltd., a leading provider of Information Technology (IT) Consulting and Professional Services, today announced the first issuance of the Fast Switch Hiring Index (FSHI) for the Columbus, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan markets.

The FSHI is an index designed to measure, on a quantitative basis, the inclination of companies in the measured markets to hire full time, IT professionals. The index uses the number of online job advertisements from a proprietary selection of job posting web sites, as well as large corporate web sites, and takes into account a number of proprietary factors to provide a strong correlation to the change in the intent of employers in the measured markets to hire new IT employees.
For last week, the index settled at 1,032 for Columbus, Ohio, and 1,063 for Detroit, Michigan. Fast Switch used the week of December 7-11, 2009 as the index’s base week with a numerical index value of 1,000. Accordingly, the week of December 14-18, 2009 showed an increase in the index of 3.2% for the Columbus market and an increase of 6.3% for the Detroit market. This indicates an increase in the intent to hire IT employees in both of these markets.
Initially, the index will be issued weekly for the Columbus, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan metropolitan markets. Fast Switch will expand the index to include other geographic markets during 2010. It can be found online at the following web URL:

Fast Switch, Ltd. is one of Central Ohio’s fastest growing privately-held companies according to Columbus Business First. Fast Switch was formed in December of 1996 and currently has over 180 employees working in almost half the states in the US. Revenues for 2008 exceeded $16 million. Its client base includes 2 of the Fortune 10, 4 of the Fortune 20, 22 of the Fortune 500, and 25 of the Fortune 1,000. It has two major offices in Dublin, Ohio and Wixom, Michigan. Fast Switch expects to open new offices in Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, and Minneapolis-St. Paul during 2010.